Saturday, September 08, 2012

Last year,I hopped onto my pal Nick Davis's tradition of throwing out his mid-year movie awards as he hits his 50th screening of the year. Nick's busy making me jealous at the Toronto International Film Festival right now, which means I'm getting my At 50 article out first. So enjoy this here appetizer, and do check out Nick when he hits you with the main course soon enough.

Top 10 Movies of 2012 (so far...) (and in alphabetical order...)

21 Jump Street: The best high-school
movie in years and the funniest movie of the year so far. Great
chemistry between Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum, with the both of them
as likeable as they've ever been, and some really strong supporting
performances. It's not like the post-modern take on vintage TV is a
novel one, but Jump Street is never content to rest smugly on its laurels.

The Avengers: The two best superhero movies of the summer (this and, yes, The Dark Knight Rises) both delivered sufficient largeness on screen, something that precious few superhero movies of late have been able to do. Avengers took that a step further with some sharp character work and the most thrilling action scenes of the year.

Bachelorette:
The streak of nastiness running right down the center of this acidly
funny movie feels designed to shred any lingering sense of
sentimentality about the wedding-themed female comedy. Mission
accomplished. Kirsten Dunst is so perfect, and no one's ever gone wrong
deploying Lizzy Caplan and Adam Scott in any capacity.

Beasts of the Southern Wild:
Effective world-building and affecting moments of poetry, even when I
kind of wavered as to whether the filmmakers were quite in control of
some of the more runaway fantastical moments. Best music of the year,
too, or haven't I mentioned?

The Cabin in the Woods: Pure
fun from beginning to end, and a smart deconstruction of horror movies
while still taking the time to give us a great ride. Not the scariest
thing you've ever seen, but so, so satisfying.

Chronicle:
My favorite discovery of the early part of the year, a low-gloss take on
the superhero movie with a welcome focus on the characters rather than
the powers. Forget about the first-person-filming device -- it's a
framework but it doesn't define the movie. That's done by some killer
performances (Dane DeHaan, I'm gonna make you happen) and a refreshing
break from formula.

Damsels in Distress: Whit Stillman
really does seem to exist outside of time, which you'd think would make
this look at collegiate gender politics into something nightmarish and
Tom Wolfe-y, but instead it feels like a fable about one of the more
fabled experiences in American culture. He was always going to miss out
on realism, so how about some singing and dancing? Greta Gerwig, Adam
Brody, and Megalyn Echikunwoke are delightful.

The Forgiveness of Blood: Brilliant follow-up for director Joshua Marston, after 2004's Maria Full of Grace. This one shares Maria's unshowy immersion into a non-American culture with concerns that boil the political down to the deeply personal.

Hope Springs: The year's most welcome surprise, with an
invigorating generosity of spirit to its characters and their lives and
their problems that don't have pat solutions. Love is hard and marriage
is harder, and time doesn't always make it easier, and this movie isn't
ready to laugh that all off in an avalanche of old-people jokes.
Dunderheaded music cues aside, come for some great lead performances by
Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep that hit each other at odd angles in a
most satisfying way.

Take This Waltz: Ragged and unwieldy and not without some
significant problems -- if you were to tell me the characters were too
irritating for you to enjoy, it's not like I'd be able to blame you. But
Sarah Polley goes to some unexpected places, and beautifully so. The
last half-hour is a delightful surprise that kind of runs past where the
usual endpoint of a movie like this and finds its way into some great
observations about relationships and life and stuff.

Honorable Mentions: Moonrise Kingdom; Magic Mike; Friends with Kids

BEST ACTOR

Dane DeHaan - Chronicle:
For walking the line between genuinely sympathetic and opaquely
dangerous, as he'd hinted at during his season-long run on HBO's In Treatment. He elevates a decently imaginative first-person superhero deconstruction into something more memorable.

Tristan Halilaj - The Forgiveness of Blood: For playing one
of the year's best heroes without hiding the fact that he's walking in
some seriously oversized shoes. His nonprofessional status helped play
up his awkwardness, but he delivered a sympathetic and watchable
character from start to finish.

Tommy Lee Jones - Hope Springs: For steering into the skid of
his and Streep's contrasting styles, not backing down from his
character angry core in order to soften himself for a rom-com audience,
and for some seriously low-key comic timing within those parameters.

Adam Scott - Friends with Kids: For delivering yet another
comedic crush object and holding up to Westfeldt's often pitiless turns
of plot (that left turn into tearfulness at the end would have felled
many an actor of Scott's caliber).

Emily Blunt - Your Sister's Sister: For proving in this (and The Five-Year Engagement; and probably Looper
later this year) that she has the best co-star chemistry in the
business, this time exhibiting a pitch-perfect sister relationship with
Rosemarie DeWitt.

Kirsten Dunst - Bachelorette: For winning her way back into
my good graces with an acidic outlook on bridesmaid duty and an
uncompromising fidelity to a character who's more than just Head Bitch.
Also, for every killer reaction shot in that final, breakneck half-hour.

Ari Graynor - For a Good Time, Call...: For forcing her way
into a cap and gown and graduating from best friend/comic relief to
comedic heroine, all the while keeping everything that made us love her
on the sidelines. For flipping between exquisite raunch to relatable
sweetness without ever screeching the brakes on the former. For the way
she says "vadgebags."

Aggeliki Papoulia - Alps: For once again being the biggest
weirdo for Giorgos Lanthimos. For finding a way to make a movie about
people who step into the lives of dead people, for the benefit of their
loved ones, somehow even more desperate and off-putting by getting to
the empty core of her own character.

Meryl Streep - Hope Springs: For using every bit of Mannered
Meryl until it was time to get good and real. I know we all agreed that
after Oscar #3, we were all going to put Meryl away for a while, but
I'll take this performance over a Doubt or an Iron Lady any day.

Honorable Mentions: Michelle Williams (Take This Waltz); Greta Gerwig (Damsels in Distress); Rosemarie DeWitt (Your Sister's Sister)
*Seriously,
how great has this half-year been for lead actresses that I have to
leave three amazing performances like these off the list?

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR

Luke Kirby - Take This Waltz: For making me that attracted to
a rickshaw driver. For taking the least sympathetic character in a film
full of unsympathetic characters and wearing down the audience's
defenses. He goes from being Bad Choices Personified to a risk worth
taking.

Fran Kranz - The Cabin in the Woods: For diving down the rabbit
hole of our culture's love affair with goofy stoners and coming out the
other side with a real person. For handling the Joss Whedon quip-heavy
style as well as anyone. For continuing my unlikely love affair with
Topher from Dollhouse.

Matthew McConaughey - Magic Mike: For all the reasons
everybody else has been saying. Truthfully, this whole Make Matthew
Happen campaign is kind of outside my sphere of interest, but it's not
like I can deny that he's been pretty great in movies this year.

Mark Ruffalo - The Avengers: For being best in a show in an
uncommonly strong cast for a superhero movie. For ANY movie, really. All
due respect to Eric Bana and Edward Norton, two fine actors, but
Ruffalo got to the heart of Bruce Banner and gave the Hulk some stakes.

John Travolta - Savages:
For overcoming all my exhaustion with the whole Travolta Thing and
delivering a performance that was funny and really smartly calibrated.
Something convinced him to hold something back -- in an OLIVER STONE
MOVIE -- and those few degrees of control made his character's excesses
all the more satisfying.

Annette Bening - Ruby Sparks: For drawing laughs from her
very first breath onscreen and having the time of her life rolling
around inside the Earth Mother trope.

Salma Hayek - Savages: For swallowing everything in her path
in exactly the ways the movie called for. For juicing the chemistry
between her and Blake Lively. For her flair with wardrobe.

Brie Larson - 21 Jump Street: For being an absolute star in the making. For embodying a high school girl who's neither demure trophy nor bitchy queen.

Samantha Morton - Cosmopolis: For being the only actor to render the wonky, circular garblings of DeLillo's monologues into something compelling.

Sarah Silverman - Take This Waltz:
For taking the most predetermned character in the movie and making her
surprising anyway, through force of her personality. For nailing the
hell out of that "life has a gap in it" monologue.

Recently Viewed

Mission: Impossible - Ghost ProtocolThis was deeply stupid but a LOT of fun. It made me forget how creeped out I am by Tom Cruise, it nailed set piece after set piece, and it took the "A Really Great Episode of Alias" level of M:I 3 to the next step of being "A Really Great Alias Movie." In a year when so many movies just would not stop telling us about the magic of the movies and how films could let us see the impossible, Brad Bird stepped up to the plate and actually showed us. That sequence in Dubai is going to be tough for action movies to top for a long while. And I would honestly nominate it for Costume Design because every single person in that cast looked the most fuckable they ever have, and that's saying something. Jeremy Renner and Paula Patton, nice work. B / B+

The Girl with the Dragon TattooZodiac meets Seven without the latter's audacity nor the former's studiousness. OR ... the best season of The Killing ever. As a story, it's a smidge too obvious, and I seriously do think it's episodic enough to have been made into a TV series. And I don't want to get into a Gender Studies thing about Lisbeth -- and I could totally entertain ideas to the contrary -- but to me she was pure male fantasy, if a particularly badass male fantasy. Viewed in that light, the rape scene is less bracingly necessary than luridly opportunistic. But I'm not trying to say I was deeply offended by the movie or anything. It's a fun procedural with compelling actors in the lead roles (how does Daniel Craig's insane sexiness continue to sneak up on me?). Obvious casting in the supporting roles is a drawback, but overall, it was far easier for me to look past the story and appreciate Fincher's frigid aesthetics (that ever-present howling wind!) here than it was in The Social Network. B-

MargaretHere's where 2012 Joe apologizes to 2006 Joe, because I know how frustrating it is to live in the parts of America that just don't get limited-release indie movies that we get in New York. Because I complained and complained about not getting to see Margaret, and ultimately, it was put back into theaters and I got to take advantage of my incredibly fortunate geography to see it. Of course, after weeks and weeks of #teamMargaret, I was worried I'd been oversold on the movie, that I would walk out not getting what all the fuss was about. I'm happy to say I DO get what the fuss was about. It's not a perfect movie, but it packs a punch. The moment that drives the film -- a first-act bus accident that costs Allison Janney her life -- is legitimately harrowing, and it makes total sense that this would be traumatic enough to drive the plot of this sprawling tale (and to stand in for 9/11 when the movie's allegorical needs make it necessary). Anna Paquin's performance as a girl whose self-centeredness is almost feral is a marvel (and it connects a lot of dots for the way she's been playing Sookie on True Blood, to be honest). And the supporting cast is full of great performances and teen actors who would go on to become A Thing in the five years since this movie was made. Believe the hype about Jeannie Berlin's performance, too. She doesn't show up until halfway through, but her every line reading (which range from hilarious to scathing) is a winner, and she and Paquin make for one of the more fascinating screen duos in recent history. Lonergan has significant pacing issues in the latter half -- and my ass he couldn't find any scenes to cut; there are whole subplots and characters (Jean Reno; Matt Damon) who could have been trimmed and/or set aside for a director's cut -- but the script and the actors rarely step wrong. Here is a movie that bites off a lot of big ideas, about responsibility, about the limits of hanging meaning on the meaningless, and how Upper West Side teens can be just as monstrous and insufferable as their east-side counterparts. Also, if every five years we could get a new movie starring the 2005 version of Matt Damon, that would be just fine. Yum. B+

PariahThere's going to be a danger of overpraising this low-budget indie for being a low-budget indie, and for being about the kinds of characters and environments you don't usually get, even in low-budget indies. When it comes to black, teenage lesbians in lower-middle-class families in non-hipster Brooklyn, we're not exactly spoiled for choice, so for that alone, Pariah SHOULD be celebrated. And it's a very good movie, on its own terms. Adpero Oduye makes for a magnetic and fascinating lead, and the movie lets her life be about a lot of different things at once. Teen movies have a particular tendency to reduce their characters' pressures to just one thing, but Oduye has to deal with coming out and fears over her parents' crumbling marriage, and strained best-friend relationships, and a lot more. It's not a perfect movie -- some of the dialogue feels heavy and scripted, and I don't think Kim Wayans is all that great as the mom. But overall, it's really solid (and not nearly the suffocating bummer I've heard it described as). B

ShameIt's maybe ever-so-slightly more an acting showcase for Michael Fassbender than a cinematic masterpiece, but who's going to complain about settling for very, very good? McQueen digs deep into Fassbender's sex addict character in a way that's explicit but not salacious, and ultimately the joke's on us, because he really puts us into the mindset of a tormented guy unable to forge any kind of human connections. It's quite something. I could go on for about 10 more lines worth of prurient concerns (honestly, Fassbender is 30% penis by volume, I'd swear to it), and one fairly story-based quibble (McQueen really pusses out at the gay club), but for the most part, it's a total must-see. B+

The Week in TV:

Fringe (5/6)I have to say, this left me largely unsatisfied. Not the part about Peter at the end -- I'm confident that's going to get resolved in a way that'll open up season 4 in a big way. But that's actually part of my real problem: this whole episode didn't feel like a conclusion to everything Season 3 has built to but rather a beginning for the next arc. But without satisfyingly resolving what had been built up this season. Like we got an epilogue and a springboard into the next chapter without the actual climax. So much of this episode was spent trying to unbox everything we were presented in the flash-forward that by the time the actual action went down, we had less than 10 minutes to advance the plot in any real way. Still love the show, still think Anna Torv has had a breakthrough season, but this was a definite letdown.

Parks and Recreation (5/5)How does this show do it? What for all intents and purposes seemed like a purely goofy, guest-star-driven episode with Parker Posey as Leslie's rich-town nemesis (with a b-story about Ron Swanson desperately trying to avoid a birthday celebration in his honor) managed to arrive at no fewer than three emotional high-points. Not one of them felt like cheap sentiment, either, they were completely earned and true to the characters. That Leslie/Ron birthday scene was set up so slyly, it was like the twist ending of a thriller. This is what a show can do when it's built on such a strong foundation of characters. Well fucking done.

30 Rock (5/5)What a weird episode, with a random Kenneth moment at the end that I'd almost buy as an actual plot point considering how well it's supported by several seasons of "Kenneth is ageless" jokes. Liz being tormented by Tracy was funny, if honestly sad, and Jenna works best when opposite Will Forte. But really, this was all about Victor Garber, for me. Kudos to the show for nabbing such a great guest star for such a fun role -- I don't know why "wool" is so comedy-friendly a concept, but it just is. It's very wool.RuPaul's Drag Race (5/2)Not as explosive as past seasons' reunions -- the Shangela-Raven feud seems to be at least nominally active, but neither seemed all that invested in propagating it. ...Well, Shangela was, kind of. But besides one more tired rehash of the Heather vs. Boogers battle (my stance: the Heathers were throwing shade like good queens should; the Boogers took it personally because they're insecure and not seasoned; advantage: Heathers), and Alexis Mateo made a lame attempt to shame Michelle Visage for actually judging her, but mostly it was just a rehash of the season's big moments. The big story for me was confirmation that my love for Mariah was not misguided. She may have been eliminated for fully supportable reasons (she didn't have the chops when it came to performance), but she showed up with a killer face and a sparkling attitude. See you on Drag U, girl!

Game of Thrones (5/1)Damn it, Game of Thrones! You got me hooked last week with that sweet scene of Jon Snow gifting his lil' sister with a sword. Why won't you just let me love you?? This week's episode took two steps forward (Catelyn continues to be a character worth cheering for; Jaime Lannister suddenly has layers beyond the clichéd sister-fucking), but then two steps back with even more tedious political hoo-ha, more indistinguishable characters, and more of Joffrey and Vinerys, possibly the most one-dimensional characters on television. On the bright side, I really think that child-bride sex slave and her hulking rape-monster of a husband are gonna make it!